Saturday, July 21, 2007

Pipes is a free online service by Yahoo that "lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code."

If you understood that without further explanation then well done. I didn't, so had do some prolonged research to find out what it was all about. (For those who know me you will know for "prolonged research" means I found out what it was quite quickly and then went on to play with it for a long time)

In basic terms Pipes allows you to do more with feeds.

For example you can:

Combine multiple feeds into one.

Run filters on a feed or combined feed to extract only the information you require.

For those with more developer experience than I, I can see that the interface is clear and it is probably relatively simple to create new pipes from scratch. At my level of understanding I was able to clone pipes made by others and then make some basic alterations to them. Cloning creates a copy of the pipe on your own Yahoo pipes page. If you are not game to make any alterations then, simply browse for a pipe that you think would be of use to you as it is and either use it from there or 'clone' the pipe to your own Yahoo Pipes page. by just hitting the 'clone button'.

If you would like to have a go creating or editing pipes yourself a good place to start is on the Examples page. You can find tutorials at:

2 comments:

Bo Aphran
said...

Pipes is even more powerful now when has the reg exp operator. I'm reading this tutorial ( http://theytookmystapler.blogspot.com/2007/09/yahoo-pipes-case-study-of-using-regex.html ) on it, I will use Pipes with the reg exp operator to change the titles of my Flickr pictures.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Pipes is a free online service by Yahoo that "lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code."

If you understood that without further explanation then well done. I didn't, so had do some prolonged research to find out what it was all about. (For those who know me you will know for "prolonged research" means I found out what it was quite quickly and then went on to play with it for a long time)

In basic terms Pipes allows you to do more with feeds.

For example you can:

Combine multiple feeds into one.

Run filters on a feed or combined feed to extract only the information you require.

For those with more developer experience than I, I can see that the interface is clear and it is probably relatively simple to create new pipes from scratch. At my level of understanding I was able to clone pipes made by others and then make some basic alterations to them. Cloning creates a copy of the pipe on your own Yahoo pipes page. If you are not game to make any alterations then, simply browse for a pipe that you think would be of use to you as it is and either use it from there or 'clone' the pipe to your own Yahoo Pipes page. by just hitting the 'clone button'.

If you would like to have a go creating or editing pipes yourself a good place to start is on the Examples page. You can find tutorials at:

2 comments:

Bo Aphran
said...

Pipes is even more powerful now when has the reg exp operator. I'm reading this tutorial ( http://theytookmystapler.blogspot.com/2007/09/yahoo-pipes-case-study-of-using-regex.html ) on it, I will use Pipes with the reg exp operator to change the titles of my Flickr pictures.